Readers must be given room to bring their own emotions to a piece so crammed with emotional content; the writer must tenaciously resist explaining why the material is so moving.

One of underestimated tasks in nonfiction writing is to impose narrative shape on an unwieldy mass of material.

You learn to write by writing.

There are all kinds of writers and all kinds of methods, and any method that helps you to say what you want to say is the right method for you.

The secret of good writing is to strip every sentence to its cleanest components. Every word that serves no function, every long word that could be a short word, every adverb that carries the same meaning that’s already in the verb, every passive construction that leaves the reader unsure of who is doing what—these are the thousand and one adulterants that weaken the strength of a sentence. And they usually occur in proportion to the education and rank.

To defend what you've written is a sign that you are alive.

I have no interest in teaching writers how to sell. I want to teach them how to write. If the process is sound, the product will take care of itself, and sales are likely to follow.